Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Here is a tentative blurb for Space Operatic. Bear in mind this is a humorous science fiction novel, so the blurb needs a bit of humor (which I hope this version does!). Let me know what you think or if you have suggestions for improvements. Thanks!
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Roberto Maccarone has taken his company, Space Operatic, to the fringes of the solar system in pursuit of artistic acclaim. But in the cold dark of the Oort Territories where the culture scene is lower than that found in most petri dishes, Lady Luck plays hard-to-get. Maccarone’s theater blows up, a power-mad businessman tricks him into spying on a gang of malcontent miners, and a horde of ruthless mercenaries descend, guns blazing. Really, now, how hard can it be to stage a performance?

Some say a curse has followed the company ever since that incident on Titan, but Maccarone will never lose faith, especially since the most fabulous theater in the solar system lies just next door, cosmically speaking. If only he could play that theater, Maccarone’s success would be assured! But the keys are held in the icy grip of the local Culture Minister, and nothing–not Maccarone, not obscene amounts of money, not even that guy who juggles flaming kabobs while singing an ancient song about how great America was–can pry them loose. Will it be fame for Maccarone and his troupe? Or unemployment in Beelzebub’s outhouse?

You're welcome, everyone. I think at some point I'll write up a "lessons learned" for Ingram Spark, probably on Medium. I use it exclusively now so I don't have to do multiple setups, but there are some important trade-offs one has to learn how to manage.

I know most people here are not using Ingram Spark, but for anyone who is, you can use coupon code NANO2020 through March 31, 2019 to get free setup or revisions. You can use it as many times as you want through March.

Alex wrote: "Ooh, a new snippet of information, thanks, Dale, I didn't know that about the The Great Library of Alexandria."

You're quite welcome. I should also include a caveat: I'm not much of an historian, so anything I say along those lines should be independently verified. ;-)

Chrys wrote: "Re the British Library--I've heard about this, but I decided not to bother. Do they really want copies of the thousands of indie publications? I should think not.

I'm not in the UK, but they probably do. Something similar is in place in the U.S., although it works a bit differently. When you register your copyright, you have to provide two deposit copies, which go to the Library of Congress.

This is a very old practice, dating back (as far as I know) to the Great Library of Alexandria, where a law required that any ship that came into port had to surrender any books on board, which would be copied and then returned to their owners. This made the library the greatest repository of written materials of its day.

A short reading list that I wrote because I was tagged in a chain challenge: Not Walking the Plank.

I've paid it forward by tagging a number of you folks. ;-)

Welcome, Jenna! I'll give you a Twitter follow when I have a moment.

Just in time for 2020, My latest from Publishous: Writing Habits for the Swamped.

I originally sent this to The Writing Cooperative for a series they invited their writers to submit to, but they rejected it. They've become very picky of late, particularly about formatting. I'm not even sure what I did that caused them to reject it. Oh, well. I sent them a different one and am waiting to hear back.

My latest from The Writing Cooperative: The World Is Your Writing Prompt

Thanks, Carole and Sam! I'm a fairly regular contributor to Lit Up, so it doesn't surprise me that they accepted the story, but the timing was nice. Sometimes it takes them longer to publish a story than others, and with the holidays I was afraid it might not get done until next week.

Just in time for the holidays, Lit Up has published my latest short story: For Emergency Use Only. I hope you like it.

Happy holidays to everyone!

Carole wrote: "In case you didn't notice we set up a Facebook page for this thread. We are sharing our ads on social media. I don't know about anybody else, but my sales have increased. Please join us and we will..."

FYI, the link didn't work for me...

Carole wrote: "There's a publisher- so I'm not sure who is printing it."

In that case, it's probably that Amazon orders however many copies they think they need at any given point and if they happen to run out, the book shows as out of stock until they receive more. That's assuming the order ships to the customer from Amazon rather than the publisher, which I'm guessing it would. Not that I know for sure.

The ebook edition of True Death (Howard County Mystery #2) is on sale for $2.99 for the next couple of weeks. It's promoted today (12/16) on Manybooks and will be featured in Bargain Booksy's newsletter on Saturday, 12/21.

Thanks, Sam!

Carole wrote: "Thanks. We investigated why the book fell so quickly- It's temporarily out of stock! Which makes no sense since it's POD- What game is Amazon playing?
Do you think it's a ploy to keep indies and sm..."

Was it published through KDP? I've read that some authors have problems with this if they go through another POD service. There is speculation it's an underhanded way of getting authors to use KDP to avoid out of stock issues. But if you've published through KDP, then that wouldn't seem to make any sense.

Lillith wrote: "I don't have a premium Medium account but I used one of my free stories to read your piece, I sen..."

Thank you!

Thanks, everyone!

I'm today's featured author on Manybooks, They accorded me this interview for free (normally it's a paid service).